“It’s not possible to get anything more typically Russian,”he said. “You can just imagine a real wild dance, with the vodka flowingfreely. I see all of that really clearly when I play the last movement.”

Muffitt lit up when he heard that.

“Excellent! Oh, this’ll be fun,” he said.

Gurt teaches at Louisiana State University, but he hasstrong connections to Michigan.

Born in Brooklyn, he moved to Ypsilanti at 8 years oldwhen his father was hired as a professor at Eastern Michigan University.

“I think of myself as having come of age in Ann Arbor,” hesaid.

Gurt studied at University of Michigan during the glory daysof Ann Arbor’s UMS concert series. That meant a front row seat to piano godslike Anton Rubinstein and Sviatoslav Richter.

“I got to hear almost everything my friend in New York gotto hear, but I also could find a place to park my car,” he said.

“It was a great place to grow up. I didn’t realize quite howgreat until I left the place to go to graduate school at Juilliard.”

Gurt was on the search committee that hired Muffitt asconductor of the LSU Symphony in the late 1970s.

“He was such a good hire the University of Texas at Austinbought him out from under us,” Gurt said.

He’s not surprised at Muffitt’s subsequent success.

“I would have put money on him even in the early days,” hesaid.

Last year, Gurt opened Baton Rouge Symphony season playingGershwin with Muffitt. Conductors have to dial it down to let some soloistsshine, but Gurt has a “bring it on” attitude toward Muffitt’s power on the podium.

“For the performance to happen, the conductor really has tohold up his own end,” Gurt said. “He can’t just follow the soloist. Tim isgreat at holding up his end.”

Muffitt’s other end Friday consists of poling the orchestrathrough a spacious panorama of Nordic majesty, the Fifth Symphony of Finnishmaster Jean Sibelius.

“It’s an adventure, an unfolding,” Muffitt said. “It’s notwithout structure, but there’s a sense of an ever-changing journey.”

Sibelius and Tchaikovsky will both carry a lot of weight,but there’s nothing light about Friday’s program. The opener, by 20th-centuryBritish composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, will show a side of the symphonyMuffitt hasn’t explored before.

In a moving tribute from one century to another, Williams’“Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis” runs a gorgeous set of variations on atheme written by a Tallis, a medieval master.

Because it’s scored only for strings, Muffitt waited untilhis fifth year as Lansing’s maestro to do it.

“I feel like our string section has come together in abeautiful way over the last few years,” Muffitt said.

It’s a tricky bit of exposure that would have beenunthinkable in Lansing 10 years ago. The score calls for the orchestra to breakinto three choirs of strings, from intimate to massive in scale, molding thespare medieval melody into three-dimensional relief. If sounded properly, themelody seems to reverberate into eternity.